The City of Fading Light

by Jon Cleary

  “What’s been happening?”

  “The British Ambassador has been down to see the Fuehrer at Obersalzberg. Things look very bad, Herr Carmody.”

  He was looking through the German newspapers. WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG . . . POLISH ARCHMADNESS . . . GERMAN FAMILIES FLEE . . . Who believed all this? he wondered. Then remembered Spanish civil war stories in some of the British conservative newspapers, which he had read long after the event and which had made him wonder if he and the conservative editors were thinking of the same war. Still the bias in those stories had not been as blatant as the lies in these German despatches.

  “All the English and French correspondents left for the frontier last night, all except Herr Burberry. He telephoned this morning and said he was leaving today. He said he would be at the Adlon till three o’clock, if you came back.”

  Carmody looked at his watch. “Phone London and tell them I’ll ring them at six o’clock with my piece. I’ll be back here at four.”

  On the way over to the Adlon he wondered if he should phone Cathleen out at Neubabelsberg, but decided against it. If the American correspondents hadn’t left, then she, as an American, was safe for the moment. He might get his own marching orders, but that would depend whether the Foreign Press Office looked at his passport or his press card.

  Burberry, umbrella hanging on his chair-back, was at a table in the Adlon bar. He looked morose, older, like an early mourner at a funeral alone with the deceased. “Dear boy, I’m afraid the worst is about to happen.”

  “Who’s going to cover for The Times?”

  At the worst of times priorities have to be observed. The world may come to an end, but someone must be there to report it. Preferably someone from The Times, of course.

  “We’ll draw from the pool.” Burberry sipped his large schnapps; he had once been a gin-and-tonic man, but was no longer. “What a pity our Foreign Office chaps are such sportsmen.”

  “How’s that?” Carmody was puzzled; it was unlike Burberry to go off at tangents.

  “Haven’t I ever told you about McMartin-Innes, used to be military attaché at our embassy? They sent him home in June, said he was too militaristic or something. Splendid chap. Had imagination, something one doesn’t find often in military attachés. Thanks, I will—I’ve developed a taste for schnapps. It is not as civilized as gin, but brings out the primitive in me . . . Where was I?”

  Carmody had never seen him like this before: dispirited, almost lost. “McMartin-Innes, the military man with imagination.”

  “Oh yes.” Burberry sat quiet till the waiter had brought their drinks and gone away again. “You know my flat? Overlooks the Unter den Linden, just across the street. Well, McMartin-Innes was up there one evening having a drink. Had to go to the lavatory, so I showed him the bathroom. It was a hot night, just like the nights we’ve been having. The bathroom window was open and while he was standing there having his piss, he looked out and down into the street, recognized where he was and suddenly had this idea. There must be some connection between the bladder and the brain—I’ve had some of my best moments of inspiration standing over a lavatory bowl.”

  “What was this pissworthy idea he had? I hope he didn’t wet his shoes in his excitement.”

  “He looked down into the Unter den Linden, imagined Hitler riding up there in his open car in one of his processions—I told you he had imagination—” He took a sip of his drink, paused a moment, then picked up his story again: “He saw that a good marksman, using a telescopic sight, could shoot Der Fuehrer—” his fruity voice mocked the title “—and get away without anyone’s discovering where the shot had come from. My bathroom window is almost indistinguishable from down in the street—the angle is too acute. The marksman could have been gone from my flat, with his rifle dismantled and in a small suitcase, before the security men could have got a line on where the bullet had come from.”

  “What happened?”

  “McMartin-Innes asked me would I mind his using the flat? What could I say? I’d never be able to write the full story, of course, but one has to make sacrifices in the greater interest. The assassination itself would be a big enough story, though, of course, one would have preferred to add one’s own background material. So I agreed.”

  “So why was it never attempted?”

  “McMartin-Innes put the idea to the FO and they vetoed it. Said it would be unsportsmanlike. Isn’t that priceless? They are so simple-minded at times. It makes one wonder, dear boy, if the FO isn’t some sort of tennis club.”

  Carmody knew there would be many more wrong gestures, sporting or otherwise, before Hitler was disposed of. “Are you going back to London?”

  “Not yet. I thought I might spend a few days in Warsaw with our chap there.”

  “You want your head read, Oliver.” Carmody all at once felt an affection for the tall Englishman. They were opposites in every way, in background, education, politics and style; but a bond had grown between them that Carmody realized might now be broken and in the most tragic way. “If war starts, the first bombs are going to fall there. Don’t be a bloody hero. Go home to London. Or into France or Holland or somewhere. Anybloodywhere but Warsaw.”

  But Burberry was not to be dissuaded. It hurt him to have to run away from the news here in Berlin. For all his High Church demeanour, his Old Etonian view of the world, he was a born newspaperman: one did not turn one’s back on a story. If he could not cover it from the safe end, he would cover it from the dangerous end.

  “No, dear boy. Warsaw it is. Who knows, I may even be back here—Der Fuehrer may have a last-minute attack of sanity. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you before I go.” He took two keys out of his pocket. “I’m not giving up my flat, just in case I do return—the rent is paid up for another three months. Drop in there occasionally, there’s a good chap. Just check if the landlord or the caretaker has been in there looting my wines. Take a bottle or two, if you wish. If war does break out, that means I shan’t be back. So take anything you fancy in the flat. Better you than some Gestapo thug.”

  Carmody took the keys. “I’ll do my best.”

  Burberry finished his drink, shook his head as if the last draught had been fiercer than those before it, rose and held out his hand. “Goodbye, dear boy. Do take care of yourself. I’m half-inclined to thumb my nose at our embassy’s advice and stay on here, but if the roof does fall in, I suppose one might be interned and that would be a damned nuisance. The Times doesn’t like running stories about what happens to its own correspondents. The editor thinks it’s bad form, like Bradman or Hutton phoning in his own cricket score.”

  Carmody squeezed the hand in his. “Good luck, Oliver. Keep your head down in Warsaw.”

  Burberry went across to the bar, left a large tip for all the waiters, said goodbye to the room at large and went out swinging his umbrella, to the soft applause of the white-gloved waiters. Some people have a natural talent for exiting in style: actors, the more worldly bishops, confidence men: Oliver Burberry was all of those in a way. Carmody thought: let me go out the same way, Lord. Just don’t let me slink out.

  He finished his beer, then went out into the Unter den Linden. As he stepped out on to the broad pavement he saw everyone in the street stop and look up. Then he heard the roar, that double-beat of bomber engines that he had first heard in Spain; he looked up and saw the bombers, nine of them, going overhead like winged sharks, heading east. He looked around for Burberry, wanted to run after him to pull him back from Warsaw; but there was no sign of him, and in a moment the bombers had gone. Everyone lowered their faces, looked sheepishly at each other, seeing their own expressions reflected in the faces they looked at: they were all tense and, yes, afraid. Then they moved on, jerkily, out of synchronization, like figures in a newsreel that had been stopped as they were in mid-stride.

  Carmody walked back to his office, aware now of the tension in the city. The weather was warm and sultry; just the atmosphere in which a stor
m might break. At the office Olga Luxemburg was as tense-looking as those out in the streets. “We can’t get through to London. They have cut off all telephone, telegraph and radio communication to anywhere outside Germany. I bumped into the girl at Associated Press—she said they’d just heard that the German embassies in London, Paris and Warsaw had told all German nationals to leave for home at once. It’s going to happen, Herr Carmody!”

  He tried to calm her, touching her for the first time since he had met her: he put a hand on her bony shoulder. “Don’t let’s panic till it does happen.”

  The news that he could not get through to London or anywhere else outside Germany made him feel that, more than anything else, he was being encircled by the jaws of a vice. The questioning by the Gestapo had annoyed him, even frightened him, but he had never been afraid that he could not escape it. The telephone to London and New York had, however, been more than just miles of cable: it had been a lifeline. It had been a conduit to some sort of sanity, a channel down which he could express an opinion without fear of reprisal, a line on which he could call for help if it were needed. Now he was left to his own devices and resources. For one weak moment he thought of following the English and French correspondents to the nearest frontier; not into Poland with Oliver Burberry, but to France or Holland or Denmark. Then the moment passed and he felt a disgust with himself that he should even have contemplated running away. Till the Foreign Press Office withdrew his accreditation, he was safe.

  He stayed at the office another ten minutes, reassuring Fräulein Luxemburg. She was not a weak woman, had just shown more emotion than he had seen from her before; she soon recovered and said she would stay on at the office all through the night. He promised he would be back at eight o’clock in the hope that by then the ban on outside communication had been lifted.

  Before he left the office he called the Tinklers, assured them Frau Pavel was alive and kicking.

  “Kicking?” said Luis Tinkler. “That would be her. God protect her.”

  “I’m sure he will.” But Carmody heard another flight of bombers pass over and he wondered if God was listening.

  He went over to the Wilhelmstrasse, made the rounds of the government offices where he had contacts. The tension there was most noticeable, more tangible than that out in the streets: here, people were privy to secrets. A senior secretary in the Foreign Ministry, thin and hollow-eyed, one-armed from the last war, took him aside, said in a whisper hoarse with doom, “The Fuehrer has ordered the troops to move into Poland at dawn tomorrow.”

  “What’s happening with the English?”

  “The Fuehrer has offered to guarantee he will not attempt to touch the British Empire.”

  “That’s big of him.”

  The secretary did not nod agreement, just looked warily at him. “Herr Carmody, you must appreciate how the Fuehrer feels about Danzig and the Poles. If England and France leave that matter to him, he will honour his promises to them.”

  Here in this marbled corridor, with messengers coming and going (calling Germans home from everywhere in the world?), with whispers rising and falling like a surf, was no place to debate the Fuehrer’s sense of honour.

  “Let’s hope reason prevails,” said the secretary and lifted his stump as if in supplication.

  “Whose reason?” said Carmody and left.

  Tired and sweaty, in need of a reviving bath, Carmody went home. As he got out of the taxi on Ludwigstrasse, Kreisler, the hurdy-gurdy man, came round the corner. When he saw Carmody he smiled and began to play a mournful song. Carmody wasn’t sure, but it sounded like the Dead March. “You should be playing something livelier, Heir Kreisler.”

  “Deutschland über Alles? A joke, Herr Carmody, no offence.” He looked up as more planes went over, heading east; Carmody recognized them as Stukas, the new dive-bombers.

  The monkey on Kreisler’s shoulder put its hands over its ears. “It looks as if the circus is about to start.”

  “Will you be conscripted?”

  “I’m too old for the first call-up. The war won’t last long enough for them to need me.”

  “You think Germany will win it that quickly?”

  “Of course. The English and the French don’t have the will to fight. More’s the pity.” He changed the cylinder in the organ. “I’ll have to play patriotic songs from now on. You won’t like them, Herr Carmody, but a man has to live.”

  “Why not go back to forgery? A joke, Herr Kreisler, no offence.”

  Kreisler laughed, his lined face looking as if it were about to crack apart. “If only I could! Wartime is always a good time for forgers. There are so many opportunities.”

  He went on along the street, playing a patriotic song; the monkey, now on its lead on the pavement, danced a jig and clapped its hands. Faces appeared at the open windows, hands fluttered like pigeons and coins came spinning down. Then the bells of St. Ludwig’s began to ring, drowning out the hurdy-gurdy music; Kreisler made a rude sign at the church, then looked back at Carmody, laughed and shrugged. The monkey, a capitalist, was busy picking up the coins.

  Carmody went up to his apartment. The phone was ringing as he entered the front door: it was Cathleen calling from the studio. “Sean, can I see you? . . . Now. I’m leaving the studio this minute. When did you get back?”

  “This afternoon—I’ve just come in. I can’t come to your place, darl—I have to stick by the phone.” He explained about the blocked phone lines to London. “I’ll have to be here or at the office.”

  “I’ll come to your place,” she said and hung up.

  Carmody had his bath, put on fresh clothes and had a beer. The previous World Press man had put in an ice-chest; the iceman came twice a week with blocks of ice. Carmody had become accustomed to the lukewarm beer served in the local bars and beer-gardens, but he still looked forward to the refreshing glass from his own cooler. As he took the cold bottle out of the chest he thought of the “Cobar cooler,” the box or tin, wrapped in wet hessian, that was hung in the breeze outside Australian farms and in which was kept the butter, milk and other perishable food. His mother, he guessed, was still using one.

  Cathleen arrived hot and breathless. He ran a bath for her, waited till she had got into it, then took in a drink for her and sat on the stool beside the bath. If Mum could only see me now . . . “I tried to call you from Danzig, but all the lines were jammed.”

  “I was worried about you.” She half-lifted herself out of the bath and gave him another kiss. He was surprised that he was able to keep his hands off her shining body. Is this how married couples are with each other? Or do we both have so much else on our minds that all the urge has gone?

  “I know where my mother is—” She had managed to contain her news till now, but he could see the excitement in her. With him absent in Danzig and with no one else to confide in, the knowledge of her mother’s whereabouts had been like a fever in her. “She’s in Ravensbrueck!”

  “Oh Christ!” He had just taken a sip of beer; it went flat in his mouth. “The Langs are sure?”

  She nodded. “Absolutely. I trust them, Sean. My grandmother is dead—she died there last March. But mother is okay, they said.”

  “But Ravensbrueck! How are you going to get her out of there? I hate to say it, darl, but it’s not like an ordinary prison, not from what I hear. You don’t go in there for a given sentence . . . Have you been back to your embassy?”

  She was deflated, seemed to sink lower in the water. She abstractedly began to sponge herself as she told him what she had told the Langs, that the embassy would not, could not, help her if her mother was still a German citizen. “But there must be something we can do—I’ll ask Goebbels—”

  “You won’t. Christ Almighty, darl, do you want to finish up in there with her? Your mother’s Jewish—he’s not going to shove his neck out and get her released just for a piece of nooky—”

  She threw the wet bath sponge at him, hit him in the face. She went to stand up, slipped and crashed bac
k into the bath, sending a wave of water splashing all over him as he tried to catch her. She was swearing at him incoherently, suddenly losing control; she slipped under the water and he grabbed at her head, lifting it up. She turned her dripping face, her eyes still shut against the water pouring off her, and bit his wrist. He let out a curse, but didn’t let her go.

  “Calm down—I’m sorry—listen to me—”

  She was quivering, as if in a fit; he had never had to deal with a hysterical woman or one in such a temper, and he was scared. But he held on to her, wrapping his arms round her slippery body; he was on his knees beside the bath and he was wet through. Slowly the quivering subsided, then she was quiet.

  “Let me get out,” she said without looking at him.

  He got to his feet, handed her a towel. He was about to apologize further, but thought better of it; she was still not looking at him, was in no mood to listen to him. He took one of the other towels, went out of the bathroom and into his bedroom. He dried himself, changed into dry clothes, then sat down in front of the dressing-table and looked at himself. It was his first serious fight with her or any other woman and it had left him drained.

  Then, in the mirror, he saw her standing in the doorway, the towel wrapped round her. Without turning round he said quietly, “I’m sorry, darl. It was a bloody awful thing to say—”

  “I never thought you’d be the jealous sort. I’ll never go to bed with him.”

  “It wasn’t just that I’m jealous. I’m afraid of what might happen to you. I don’t want to lose you—”

  She came and stood behind him, put her arms round his neck. The towel fell from her and he could feel her breasts against the back of his neck. There was a different sort of intimacy, almost motherly, though that image did not strike him: he would not have been able to remember ever having seen his mother’s breasts.

  “I’m afraid of losing my mother.”

  “I know that—and I’d hate it to happen.” He was still looking at her in the mirror. “I’ve got more bad news for you. They expect Hitler to send his troops into Poland at dawn tomorrow.”